Profession, Autonomy, and the Intelligentsia in Central European Perspective: Introductory Remarks

Abstract

Over the past few decades, numerous authors have explored the concept and history of professionalisation. However, studies of professions are most often conducted within a national framework, and there are relatively few examples of research that has explicitly set out to compare experiences across different countries. When starting our work in the Research Group on the History of Professionalisation, therefore, we aimed to examine the history of professionalisation processes in Hungary from a comparative perspective across time and space. Our goal was to explore, from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the decisive processes in the history of professions in Hungary.